Friday's game against No. 2 South could show how far Cañon City has come

By BRANDON HOPPER hopperb@ canoncitydailyrecord.com

Posted:
02/06/2013 05:57:00 PM MST

Junior Erika O Rourke and the Tigers will take on No. 2-ranked Pueblo South on Friday. (Jeff Shane/Daily Record)

How much change can happen in three weeks? The Cañon City Tigers girls basketball team is about to find out.

Everything was going great for the Tigers entering their Jan. 18 meeting with the second-ranked Pueblo South Colts. They had a nine-game winning streak, they were ranked sixth in the state and got there by smashing teams left and right.

Then, the Colts hung a 69-34 walloping on the Tigers.

On Friday, the Tigers will travel to play Pueblo South again.

"We can see how far we've come in a couple of weeks," Cañon City head coach Dan Heath said at practice on Wednesday.

Heath added: "(Friday's) key is we can not get beat on offensive rebounds and transition. If we take care of those two things it's going to be a good basketball game. If we don't ... it's probably going to be a repeat of what happened last time."

The Tigers got hammered on the glass the first go around. The Colts were 11 for 21 on second-chance opportunities resulting in 24 points. Cañon City was just 2 for 9 for four points, though four of those chances and two of the points came in the final minute of meaningless basketball.

"For me, it was kind of a wake-up call in a way," leading rebounder Lindsey Schwab said Wednesday. "We need to rebound, because if we rebound we can do great things."

"You can't let the team take you out of attack mode," Heath said. "South did that to us the first time, we definitely looked careful, cautious, tentative. They put it to us on pretty much every aspect of the game."

The Tigers are riding high with a 4-1 swing since they dropped to South on the first cycle and fell to Pueblo East a game later. Heath and his players have beaten Sierra and Wasson in non-league games and County and Central in S-CL games. They fell to No. 5-ranked Pueblo West 46-45 on Friday, a game that had to have mentally felt like a win.

And they'll see how much they've improved on Friday when they try to hang tough with the Colts.

"My goal for us (Friday) is we play an entire game with confidence and we attack, we just look to attack," Heath said. "Look to attack their defense, attack their press, we're not looking to survive any part of what they're going to do, we're looking to attack what they're going to do."